Henry Ford started our love affair with horseless carriages over a century ago, and the automobile has increased in popularity until it has become a necessity. Teenagers who have a car wear it like a badge of honor, and twenty-somethings who don’t have a car are often considered deprived. People who hit the age of thirty without getting their driver’s licenses are considered weird. We in America have invented an entire social category in our minds about cars and driving, and many revolve their lives around cars. In order to paint an accurate cross-section of American drivers, I will use my family as an illustrative tool.
The classic example of car and driver in my family has got to be my father. He’s a safe driver who almost always observes the speed limit, is very conscientious about traffic and traffic signals, and he can parallel park an eighteen-foot van in a twenty-foot space. He drives fluidly, like his vehicle is an extension of himself, and he can no more easily intentionally step on glass than he can back into a tree. He’s faithful to his vehicles, too. His personal use vehicle is a 1992 Ford conversion van that he bought in the beginning of 1993. It has a quarter million miles on it, but it still has its original engine. That van has been to Florida and back, Texas and back twice, South Carolina and back three times, to Kansas then Texas and back, and it served him well for all of those trips and more. He’s also the proud owner of a stenciled work truck and a 16’ box truck, both for business purposes. He’s brand loyal and will not buy a non-Ford vehicle. He is the reason why my mother owns a Ford and why my brother had Fords for a very long time.
My mother is probably a more typical driver, whatever that means. She has a 1998 Ford Contour, Light Denim, four cylinder. She’s not the queen of parallel parking, she often goes more than the posted speed limit (and faster than the standard five mark-up that most drivers do), and she has her fair share of erratic driving and cutting people off. Some people in my family are afraid of my mom’s driving because she loves her pedals. If she’s not punching the gas, she’s hammering the break. She doesn’t really “coast” a lot, and prefers the secure safety of slight whiplash than the slow reduction of speed. I’m fairly used to it, although she scares me occasionally when I’m paying close attention to her driving. If I just relax and let her do her thing, then I don’t have to worry how many yellow lights she speeds up for or how many sharp curves she takes at 40 mph.
My oldest sister Janet has my mother’s penchant for speed, but is otherwise a fairly safe driver. The only problem she has is the fact that it takes her awhile to get acclimated to a new vehicle. This wouldn’t be a problem for the normal person, but my sister has another problem that compounds this issue. My sister works at a car lot, and she loves cars. She’s currently on her third new car in the last… five years? Something like that. Every time she sees a new car, she wants it. She’s the kind of person that’s perfect for leasing, because she really wants a new car every three years. She’d have them closer together, but her husband reigns her in. My sister isn’t brand loyal as much as she is dealership loyal. She works for Courtesy Dodge/Nissan. She currently drives a 2005 Nissan Altima, a car she’s quite fond of. But that doesn’t mean she is content with it. She’ll probably want a new one in six months. She learned how to drive on a five speed, but she learned in Texas (a flat state), so the skills don’t transfer over to Pennsylvania. She’s driven an automatic since she moved here. Her husband mark has a Nissan truck (standard transmission) that he loves, and he learned how to parallel park in big cities, so he can fit an eighteen-foot truck in an eighteen-and-a-half foot space. Mark also likes dirt bikes and motorcycles.
My brother, Mike, is notorious in our family for his driving. While his driving has improved significantly since the birth of his child, it’s still an adventure any time you get into the car with him. He likes to do 180s on icy roads, drive in reverse on one-way streets, and weave through traffic completely unaided by turn signals. He has a penchant for speed, and drove my dad’s 1992 van to its peg (90 mph), all the while quoting the movie Back to the Future (Eighty-eight miles an hour!). I’ve become acclimated to his driving, so it doesn’t scare me anymore, but he does drive scarily. At my sister Janet’s wedding, the bridesmaids and groomsmen were given golf carts, and the men were supposed to drive the women to different photo locations. My sister-in-law, Tina, asked if she could have a different driver instead of my brother. (On a side note, my driver at my sister’s wedding was my brother-in-law Mark’s best friend, also named Mike. Mike grew up in the Boston metro area his whole life, and at the time of the wedding, though in his late thirties, hadn’t gotten his license yet. He has since received it.) My brother has been obsessed with cars from a very young age. As his sixteenth birthday approached, Mike asked our parents about getting a car. My parents told him that they wouldn’t buy him a car, but if he wanted one, they would help him buy one, but he’d have to come up with most of the money himself. He got a job at a pizza place in our town, walked to work, and eventually saved up enough that he could get a car. He’s been buying cars ever since. He had Ford vehicles for quite a long time. He owned a Probe, an Escort, an F-150, and his favorite Ford, his Mustang. He owned a 1988 Ford Mustang GT, 5.0 Liter, 5 speed, V6, cabernet red. He eventually got rid of that car, but he talked about it for a long time as his favorite. He also eventually got rid of his brand loyalty to Ford vehicles. As newer models proved increasingly flawed, he finally found a home in Subaru. As a father, he needed a vehicle that could hold a car seat, so he got a Subaru Outback. While he was fond of this car, it just didn’t have the punch of his Mustang. Finally, my brother now owns a car that he really loves. Subaru WRX, blue, turbo. It combines the speed and horsepower of a Mustang with family-friendly four doors. Even though he changed cars quite frequently, I predict he’ll have this one for a long time. In fact, Mike at 31 has owned more cars in all of his years than my father has at 57. One car that will change soon, however, is Tina’s car. They bought her a Jeep Liberty, and Mike hates it. He plans on switching her over to a Subaru Outback, because he liked that car so much.
Last but not least, my sister Theresa. It took her awhile to get her license, and when she did, she hated to drive. Theresa drives like my mom without the pedal love. Theresa’s good at using controlled coasting to slow down. People make fun of her being a bad driver, but she’s not much worse than my sister Janet (though Janet would probably be offended by that comment). Theresa just hasn’t driven all that much. She’s still kind of nervous behind the wheel (from what I can tell), but she’s still a fluid driver, all things considered. Theresa drives a Toyota Corolla, a car her husband picked out for her. Her husband Bryan is a car guy, you know the type. Theresa will probably keep that car until Bryan suggests she gets another one, and maybe not then, because she won’t spend money on a car unless she genuinely feels she needs one.
I hope you enjoyed my family antics. As you can see, cars overwhelm us with their significance in our lives. My opinions and attitude towards cars and driving are a story all their own, so for now, I’m just going to ride my horseless carriage into the sunset.
As you have already read, I am working in my mother’s stead as operator at Midstate Tool and Supply. I roll out of bed at seven, am on the road by 7:30, and swipe in at eight. I eat lunch at 12:30, and get half an hour. I have to swipe in and out for lunch. I swipe out at five PM and head home. This eight-to-five routine is oddly similar to one of the greatest comedy movies in recent history, the movie Office Space. Mike Judge, who most of us know as the creator of Beavis and Butthead, wrote and directed this contemporary work comedy. The movie follows the main character, Peter Gibbons, and his goal to do nothing. Followed by his two friends, Michael Bolton and Samir Nagheenanajar, Peter overcomes psychiatrists and consultants to hatch the ultimate plot. While those three characters don’t specifically appear at good old Midstate Tool, the mentality is really the same.
If you were to watch the movie, I would be a character, simply by virtue of job title. The perky receptionist can be heard close to the beginning of the movie. “Initech, Juanita speaking… Just a moment.” Sometimes, I feel like saying “Midstate Tool, Stephanie speaking” in the same voice, then following the person’s request with “just a moment” so I can feel cool. But I don’t. C’est la vie. Since I’m at the bottom of the pile, having been here less than two weeks, sometimes I feel like I have eight bosses. Since the company is quite intimate (not small), I speak to the President, Vice President, and Controller on a daily basis, not to mention Donna, my direct supervisor. Since I’m at the front desk, I don’t sit in a cubicle per se, but the feeling is similar (and I do have cubicle walls on one side of me). And Peter hits the nail on the head when he says, “In a given week, I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.” I don’t really consider answering the phones work.
I really felt like I was in Office Space today when a man walked in and said that he had a meeting with the Barry, the president, at 9:30. I asked him what he did, and he said he was a “consultant.” The only thing I could think of when he said that was the two Bobs that downsized Initech. His name was Alan McManus, and he worked for a company called International Profit Associates. Real smooth talker. Anyway, I am not so sure that Midstate is actually going to be utilizing his services, but it just struck me that I should advertise one of the greatest underground cult flicks of all time.
One character that cannot be paralleled is the character of Milton. He’s an awkward, corpulent man who mumbles all the time. His prize possession is his red Swingline stapler. Swingline didn’t make a red stapler in 1999, the year the movie went into theaters. One of the props people painted it red. Due to the cult success of the movie, Swingline now sells a red stapler on their website.
The daily grind of the operator reminds me why I went into science. I’ve always been attracted to jobs that don’t require sitting at a desk for too long. In the science field, I could stand for hours at a clip, always moving. This sedentary life is kind of grating, in all honesty. I don’t want to stay in an office for much longer, and I can’t wait to be gainfully employed. They say that art imitates life, but just the same, life imitates art.
After four long, wonderful years on Eye Contact, I thought I’d never need to use Quark Express again. As I printed out that last copy of the magazine over four months ago, I waved fondly goodbye to a program that completely changed the way I looked at Macs. The magazine quality improved steadily over the course of the four years, with last year’s Fall 2004/Spring 2005 being a pair of the best. Quark Express became like an old friend, one that I thought would never send me letters after I graduated. Quark and I, we were tight. Little did I know that he would call me again after his long hiatus, like an old boyfriend without any money.
The place where my mother works is a company called Midstate Tool & Supply. A lot of things are named Midstate around here because, well, we’re close to the middle of the state. They sell tools. The company’s owners also own a company called Fender Mender. They sell tools that fix cars. Or at least, that’s my limited knowledge of the company. I’m kind of out of the loop, really. But anyway, my point is, at the place where my mom works, they put out a catalog highlighting all of the cool gauges and and calipers and whatnot, and they like to call that catalog the Highlight. Revolutionary names, no? Well, this Highlight takes a lot of time and effort by the wonderful graphics department at good old MT&S, and during the summer, my mom said maybe I could come in part time and help out.
While that never exactly panned out, when someone at her place of employment had to take medical leave, someone in a position of power knew that she had a very unemployed daughter. One of my mother’s supervisors came to her and asked her if I could help out during their time of need. She asked me, I said yes, and the rest is history. My mother was put on the tasks of the woman who is out sick, and I am performing the tasks of my mother. I sit and wait for the phones to ring! How exciting! Almost everyone is really nice, except for that one guy, but we won’t name names. Occasionally I get other things to do, such as folding things or stuffing envelopes. Every day, these bank slips come in, and I get to organize and alphabetize. Very exciting.
But yesterday, something different happened. Just before lunch, the main woman in graphics came (who is also somewhat training my mother to do the absent woman’s job) to speak to my mother and I. She told my mother that there wasn’t much for her to do in the evenings, and that I could help out with the catalog. And of course, what program do they use for their catalog? Quark Express. I was elated. Not only did I not have to talk to people, I got to be creative and use my old program that I thought I would never see again.
For those of you who don’t know, Quark Express is software that allows you to design page layouts (like those you see in your yearbook or literary magazine). It’s similar to Adobe Pagemaker, with subtle differences that can make you pull your hair out with your first transition. Quark is a program designed for the illustrious Macintosh computer, and though the learning curve can be quite steep, it’s a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.
It’s currently Wednesday morning, and my mother is off working hard. I’m sitting at the computer, waiting for the phone to ring, and writing of my love for Quark. Hopefully I’ll get to work back in graphics again after lunch. It took me four hours to do a single page, but I filled up my time with none left over. The graphics ladies are gems (Joy and Lisa), and we all sit back there, mumbling to ourselves, pouring over pages of tools.
Sometimes Quark Express isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Occasionally you just don’t understand what’s going on, or why the computer does what it does. I love to use the “end” key, for example, when I’m typing to go to the end of the line. I hit it automatically without thinking about it. In Quark, “end” takes you to the end of the document you are working on. On the catalog I was doing, I was only making one page, so it was ok. Working on Eye Contact, however, meant that I could go from page three to page fifteen and lose where I was. Still, despite its flaws, its endearing charm shines through. Like that old boyfriend with the moths in his wallet, Quark Express makes me smile.
Hey, was that just a glacier? It seems that I may have fallen off of the face of the planet, but I assure you my summer hiatus is not due to my extreme lack of time. Up until recently, my days were spent watching TV and cooking dinner… and that was about it. Recently, however, things are beginning to pick up in my life. Due to a person out on sick leave where my mom works, I know go to work with her. What am I doing, you ask? Answering the telephone. I have a four-year degree in chemistry so I can answer a telephone. As boring as that may be (the reason why I have plenty of time to sit down and write this journal entry), many exciting things are happening in my life right now. I just had one interview three weeks ago, and another company called me on Friday (the day I took my GRE, but that is another story) for another interview. So things are happening!
Up until recently, my typical day went as follows:
Roll out of bed, 11:00 AM.
Drink cup of hot tea, get the newspaper from the front porch, let the dog out back et cetera
Turn on Animal Planet, 12:00 PM (Growing Up, a TV show that follows baby animals)
Get lunch
Switch to Spike TV, 1:00 PM (Star Trek: The Next Generation, that’s the good Star Trek with Patrick Stewart. It’s on for three hours.)
Look in the meat drawer to see what’s edible, what needs cooked, and what needs frozen.
If there’s nothing in the meat drawer, look in the freezer and get something out to thaw.
Look through cook books during commercial breaks.
Cook dinner, 4 PM
Serve dinner, 5:30 (Something fancy for my mom and I, something boring for Dad. He’s picky.)
Hang out and chat with my parents
Spike TV, 7:00 PM (CSI, back to back episodes. It’s the good CSI with Gil Grissom.)
Evening TV as scheduled
My room, Cartoon Network, 11:00 PM (Adult Swim. Family Guy, Futurama, Aqua Teen Hungerforce)
Sleep, approximately 12:30 PM
Boy, was I starting to get sick of that. Many of the Star Treks and almost all of the CSIs were re-runs that I had already seen at this point. So now, I wake up at 7:00 AM, leave around 7:25, and go to work with my mom. I sit at the Operator’s desk, waiting for the phone to ring (as it did only once while I typed this), occasionally receiving other tasks to do while waiting. This is only my third day on the job, so I still cut people off and hang up on people, due to the complexity of a multi-line phone system. It’s a lot more difficult than it seems at first.
A quick shout-out to all of my friends going back to school next week. Eye Contact 4EVA! Remind me to send you guys some money. I’ll get everyone a round of Starbucks or something.
So anyway, this is the update to explain why I haven’t updated. My life ‘til now has been very, very boring. And I mean extremely. But soon, when I get a job, I can talk all about the tactics of coping with a new workplace, finding an apartment, and all of those fun and exciting future topics!
(I’m not dead!)